Samuel Kier

{{Short description|American inventor and businessman (1813–1874)}}

Samuel Martin Kier (July 19, 1813 – October 6, 1874) was an American inventor and businessman who is credited with founding the American petroleum refining industry. He was the first person in the United States to refine crude oil into kerosene lamp oil.{{cite book

| title =Greater Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, Past, Present, Future; The Pioneer Oil Refiner

| publisher =The American Manufacturer and Iron World

| year =1901

| location =Original from the New York Public Library

| url =https://books.google.com/books?id=lkcVAAAAYAAJ&q=refinery+kier+pittsburgh&pg=PT57

}} Kier has been dubbed the Grandfather of the American Oil Industry by historians.{{cite web

| last =McInnis

| first =Karen

| title = Kier, Samuel Martin- Bio

| work = biography

| publisher =The Pennsylvania State University

| url =http://www.pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Kier__Samuel_Martin.html

| format =web

| access-date = 2008-12-12 }}

Biography

Kier was born in Conemaugh Township, Indiana County, Pennsylvania near the town of Livermore. He was the son of Thomas Kier and Mary Martin Kier. The Kiers were Scots-Irish immigrants who owned several salt wells around Livermore and nearby Saltsburg.

In addition to the salt business, Samuel helped found Kier, Royer and Co., in 1838. The company was a canal boat operation that shipped coal between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Kier also owned interest in several coal mines, a brickyard, and a pottery factory.{{Cite journal |last=Croneis |first=Carey |date=1933 |title=Early History of Petroleum in North America |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/15591 |journal=The Scientific Monthly |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=124–133 |jstor=15591 |bibcode=1933SciMo..37..124C |issn=0096-3771}}

He, along with several other investors including Benjamin Franklin Jones,{{Cite web |last1=Fork |first1=Mailing Address: 733 Lake Road South |last2=Us |first2=PA 15956 Phone: 814 886-6171 Contact |title=Benjamin Franklin "B.F." Jones (1824-1903) - Johnstown Flood National Memorial (U.S. National Park Service) |url=https://www.nps.gov/jofl/learn/historyculture/benjamin-franklin-jones.htm |access-date=2024-05-05 |website=www.nps.gov |language=en}}{{Cite web |last=Detre Library & Archives, Heinz History Center - Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation Photographs |title= |url=https://historicpittsburgh.org/islandora/object/pitt:MSP33.B006.F01.I03 |access-date=2024-05-05 |website=historicpittsburgh.org}}{{Cite web |last=Smerker |first=Nick |date=2015-06-08 |title=The Joneses |url=https://alleghenywest.org/the-joneses/ |access-date=2024-05-05 |website=Allegheny West |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |last=Detre Library & Archives, Heinz History Center |first=Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation Photographs |title=B. F. Jones in Old Warehouse Office |url=https://historicpittsburgh.org/islandora/object/pitt%3AMSP33.B006.F01.I04}} founded several iron foundries in west central Pennsylvania. The iron business would be the forerunner of the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company, one of the largest steel producers in America.

Kier married Nancy Eicher{{Cite web |title=Samuel Martin Kier, b.1813 d.1874 - Ancestry® |url=https://www.ancestry.com.au/genealogy/records/samuel-martin-kier-24-22t6368 |access-date=2024-05-05 |website=www.ancestry.com.au |language=en-US}}{{Cite book |last=Jordan |first=John W |title=Encyclopedia of Pennsylvania - biography |publisher=NEW YORK LEWIS HISTORICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY |year=1914 |pages=1467 |trans-title=}} of Greensburg, Pennsylvania in 1842.

Business career

Samuel Kier moved to Pittsburgh at the age of 21. In Pittsburgh, he found employment with a railway express company,{{Cite book |last=J. T. Henry |title=The Early and Later History of Petroleum: With Authentic Facts in Regard to Its Development in Western Pennsylvania. The Oil Fields of Europe and America. ... Fields. Also, Life Sketches of Pioneer... |publisher=J.B. Rodgers Company, Printers, 1873 |year=1872 |pages=28, 56, 61, 83, 87, 90, 94, 97}} where he recognized his business acumen. He soon became a partner in the expanding enterprise, but the business eventually collapsed during the economic downturn of the Panic of 1837.{{Cite web |title=Pennsylvania Center for the Book |url=https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/bios/Kier__Samuel_Martin |access-date=2024-05-05 |website=pabook.libraries.psu.edu}}

Samuel Kier rebounded from the failure{{Cite journal |doi= 10.2118/1195-G|title= The First Oil Well|date= 1959|last1= Dickey|first1= Parke A.|journal= Journal of Petroleum Technology|volume= 11|pages= 14–26}} of his first business by exploring new opportunities. In 1838, he ventured into canal transportation, utilizing Pennsylvania's extensive canal system connecting Lake Erie to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Kier hired several independent canal operators of the Pennsylvania Canal to establish a continuous route from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and formed Kier, Roger, and Company to manage the operation. This enterprise proved financially successful, allowing Kier to settle any outstanding debts from his previous business.

When the government began constructing the Pennsylvania Railroad, which paralleled Kier's canal route, he adapted his canal business. In 1846, Kier, in partnership with James Buchannan,{{Cite journal |last=Alfred N. Mann |title=Some Petroleum Pioneers of Pittsburgh |url=https://www.heinzhistorycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/4-Petroleum-Pioneers.pdf |journal=Western Pennsylvania History Magazine |issue=2009}} later President of the United States, established "Independent Line," working with special section where "amphibious" canal boats boats which could be taken apart and put on railroad cars where they were available, or put together and pulled along the canal system where there was no railroad. When later partnered with Benjamin Jones (of Jones and Laughlin Steel Company), this canal boat company eventually became, the "Mechanics Line." This innovative transportation method thrived until the railroad's completion in 1854, at which point Kier ceased the production and operation of the hybrid boats. But by 1854 with expanded railroad competition, the canal boat Company was discontinued and Kier, Buchannan, and Jones went into the fire-brick business in Bolivar, Pennsylvania (later moved to Salina, Pennsylvania). They, Kier and Jones, also purchased iron furnaces at Armaugh, near Johnstown, Pennsylvania. By the time he terminated his canal business, Kier had diversified into several other ventures, including a firebrick and pottery factory,{{Cite journal |last=Washlaski |first=Raymond A. |title=KIER: Kier Mine (Kier Fire Brick Mine) (Salina Mine), Salina, Bell Township, Westmoreland Co., Pennsylvania, U.S.A. |url=https://www.academia.edu/44241785}}{{Cite journal |last=Kemp |first=Emory |date=1996-01-01 |title=Review: "A Fine Substantial Piece of Masonry": Scranton's Historical Furnaces, by Daniel K. Perry and Brickyard Towns: A History of Refractories Industry Communities in South-Central Pennsylvania, by Kim E. Wallace |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3377894 |journal=The Public Historian |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=112–115 |doi=10.2307/3377894 |jstor=3377894 |issn=0272-3433|url-access=subscription }}{{Cite web |url=https://www.tribliveoffers.com/welcome |access-date=2024-05-05 |website=www.tribliveoffers.com}} investments in steel and iron, and notably, his involvement in the oil industry.

By the 1840s, Kier's salt wells were becoming fouled with petroleum. At first, Kier simply dumped the useless oil into the nearby Pennsylvania Main Line Canal, but after an oil slick caught fire, he saw a way to profit from this otherwise worthless byproduct. With no formal training in science or chemistry, he began experimenting with several distillates of the crude oil along with a chemist from eastern Pennsylvania. He developed a substance he named "Rock Oil" and later "Seneca Oil". In 1848, he began packaging the substance as a patent medicine charging $0.50 per bottle.{{cite web

|last = Harper

|first = J. A.

|title = Samuel Kier - Medicine Man & Refiner

|work = Excerpt from Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Unrefined Complex Liquid Hydrocarbons. Pennsylvania Geology, v. 26, No. 1, p. -

|publisher = Oil Region Alliance of Business, Industry & Tourism

|year = 1995

|url = http://www.oil150.com/essays/2007/02/samual-kier

|format = web

|access-date = 2008-12-12

|url-status = dead

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120315221502/http://www.oil150.com/essays/2007/02/samual-kier

|archive-date = 2012-03-15

}} He also produced petroleum{{Cite web |date=2020-12-21 |title=S.M. Kier. Petroleum Pittsburgh |url=https://fohbcvirtualmuseum.org/galleries/medicines/s-m-kier-petroleum-pittsburgh/ |access-date=2024-05-05 |website=fohbcvirtualmuseum.org/ |language=en-US}} butter (petroleum jelly) and sold it as a topical ointment.{{cite book

|title= The 76 Bonanza: The Fabulous Life and Times of the Union Oil Company of California

|last= Welty

|author2=Earl M. Welty |author3=Frank J. Taylor

|year= 1966

|publisher= Lane Magazine & Book Co

|location= Original from the University of Michigan

|page= 46

|url= https://books.google.com/books?id=xwE7AAAAMAAJ&q=Kier+%22petroleum+butter%22}} Neither product proved to be a commercial success.

After further experimenting, he discovered an economical way to produce kerosene. Kerosene had been known for some time but was not widely produced and was considered to have little economic value. But at the time whale oil, the principal fuel for lamps in America, was becoming increasingly scarce and expensive.

Kier began selling the kerosene, named "Carbon Oil", to local miners in 1851. He also invented a new lamp to burn his product. Kier never obtained a patent for his developments and many other inventors and businessmen would go on to improve upon his work yielding huge fortunes. Even so, Kier's income at the time exceeded US$40,000 per year, a huge sum for the time.

Kier established America's first oil refinery in Pittsburgh on Seventh avenue near Grant Street, in 1853. A marker identifying the site reads "Kier Refinery – Using a five-barrel still, Samuel M. Kier erected on this site about 1854 the first commercial refinery to produce illuminating oil from petroleum. He used crude oil from salt wells at Tarentum."[http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WMGBM Kier Refinery, in Pennsylvania Historical Markers] at waymarking.com Kier consulted with Edwin Drake concerning Drake's experimental oil well.{{cite book

| last =Wright

| first =William

| title =The Oil Regions of Pennsylvania

| publisher =Harper & brothers

| year =1865

| location =Original from the University of Michigan

| pages = [https://archive.org/details/oilregionspenns01wriggoog/page/n199 195] -

| url =https://archive.org/details/oilregionspenns01wriggoog

| quote =refinery kier pittsburgh.

}}